Mutual Aid

The security and longevity of a species.

During my recent visit to southern India, two aspects of feral life fascinated and impressed me deeply. One being the extreme severity and struggle for existence, because of human agency and or Nature’s fury. Insects, birds, animals and aquatic creatures spread over natural and urban expanses face enormous destruction of life periodically, every day, hour and minute. The loss cannot be mapped over a vast territory. And the second being the ‘few spots’ where animal life thrived in abundance, revealing an underlying culture and synergy based on mutual aid.

Akin to what Goethe insisted as “parental feelings” - one that exists within almost every living creature, equates to care for the progeny as well as the surrounding community. The Darwinian logic of “bitter struggle for existence… survival of the fittest” is not visible within many species of birds, animals and amphibians, facing extreme conditions inside degraded ecosystems. What appeared contrary to my earlier understanding, was that across species mutual aid is a governing factor of survival, and perhaps the framework of future security. How a species may achieve long term security yet very different from our own species in it’s modern form.

Setting aside the popular axioms of human evolution, I think that mutual aid has pre-human origins and consequently has shaped our moral instincts a long time ago. Almost as an extension of an embedded law within Nature. The following story is a throwback in time, to uncover the natural history of mutual aid as an evolutionary practice, that may also prove crucial for the very survival of human beings in the near future. “Mutual Aid can be viewed as part of the conscience — be it only at the stage of an instinct — of human solidarity.” (Pëtr Kropotkin).

We are well aware that love, sympathy, sharing and mutual aid possess immense value in terms of survival and quality of life. For who? All those who support each other in the struggle for life. All that still breaths life yet may not exist forever as a species. This is true for human beings, be they hunter gatherers or Stone Age or Neolithic or barbarians or sedentary human beings living inside the earliest cities. Through that vast expanse of time (almost a million years) a development of moral feelings guided early human beings to survive and to thrive.

What is termed as Biophilia, a “natural affinity for all that lives…” is connected to the practice of mutual aid across many species. Way before human beings appeared in the picture, many creatures evolved into intelligent and socially “Sentient Beings” (Gautama Buddha). The ‘war of each against all’ based on Darwin’s logic is perhaps not ‘the’ law of nature. Mutual struggle, much like mutual aid becomes more and more visible especially within birds, mammalia, fish and primates, when we view the earth and the survival of species with a different set of lenses.

Life in animal societies does not stop when the nesting period ends. Rather it begins in new forms. The young of many different species spend their time together, playing, competing, looking out for each other, finding food, cleaning each other and many inane activities for the sake of it. While visiting the backwaters, rivers and mangroves of Goa, I watched colonies of young Bulbuls, Sandpipers, Parrots, Peacocks, Sparrows and Kingfishers display various forms of mutual aid, coverage and protection. Clearly a sense of mutuality was visible in terms of nesting spaces and maintaining territorial limits inside a crowded ecosystem. Around the world, many different species of birds which live together for months also migrate over long distances, sometimes numbering in the thousands. As early as 1902, Pëtr Kropotkin recorded such instances of mutual aid within non-human societies, especially amongst dozens of birds, animals and critters, documented in his famous essay “Mutual Aid - A Factor of Evolution”.

Sadly we live in a globalized techno-industrial world, which champions individualism, hyper-competitive careers, infinite growth and money. Which makes us modern human beings even less sentient, as a species about our own security and survival. Because we have universally opted for values based on technology and aspirations based on individual freedom instead of non-material prosperity and mutual aid, there lies a big price within the deal. Be that a pessimistic view of mankind, which appears so good at solving every problem individually, it seems impossible for millions if not billions of human beings to mutually aid each other. Mutually propser that is. The systems that forbid us from doing so are vast and powerful. But, we must think counter-intuitively at this point, to be sentient of certain evolutionary facts (and limits). “In its wide extension [mutual aid and solidarity] even at the present time, I see as the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.” (Pëtr Kropotkin, 1905).

Positively speaking, competition is not the outstanding rule either in the animal world or in early human society. Even so as animals compete, capture and kill, it is always limited to exceptional periods. Eagles or Dogs or Yellow Jacket Wasps do not hunt for pleasure. Natural selection employs other species and conditions (climate, carrying capacity, disease, feedback loops etc) which decide the long term survival or not. To question, if increasing levels of competition amongst an exponentially growing species, is destined to compete even harder? And is disastrous beyond a limit? A path leading to ecocide?

For a few hundred years, human beings have been modeled in innumerable ways to serve technique and technology and not their real needs as defined by Nature, a very long time ago. Mutual aid can be seen as “tendency of nature” as Kropotkin argued. Not always realized in full, but always present without the need of technology or training. About people hypnotized looking at the “big picture” seem to be oblivious about what near and dear community is able to achieve via mutual cooperation. In a world marked by scarcity, mutual aid is clearly an ecological response.

Contrary to a set of contemporary maxims which misguide us through life, there can be better conditions with the “elimination of competition” (S.W. Baker, Wild Beasts 1890) by means of mutual aid and mutual support. Yet we should be careful to not extend the meaning of “elimination” to include human beings and the habitat. Be it the horrific genocide of indigenous peoples across the world or the mass extermination of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military. In the great struggle for life, between the planet and 8.4 billion people (ruled by a band of ecologically insane leaders, warmongers and techno-crazed billionaires) it seems hopeless in terms of letting mutual aid work itself into the equation. But fact remains that lower cooperation equates to lower growth and to lower standards of living. Hence the “tendency of nature” or call it natural selection, as explained by contemporary science will continuously seek out ways precisely avoiding competition as much as possible.

The “powerful human” tendency to crush all enemies and overcome the challenges posed by Nature is anthropocentric hubris which has long crossed it’s limits. We face an unstable, overheated, seething, roaring world coming up on the horizon, and without mutual aid as a guiding spirit, I expect even worse outcomes. Still, inside a hyper-competitive neoliberal society, the best we can expect in terms of solidarity and mutual aid is “meal deliveries to sewing squads, childcare collectives to legal aid, neighbors and strangers opened their wallets, offered their skills, volunteered their time and joined together in solidarity to support one another.” (Bloomberg, Visual History Mutual Aid)

Though a great deal of violence and warfare goes on between different classes of animals, between different species or different tribes, kingdoms and nations, peace and mutual support invariably favor survival and the survivors. In this aspect new anthropology speaks of “naturally a species which best realizes how to combine, care and avoid extreme competition, has the best chances in terms of evolutionary success.” (Rethinking Neolithic Societies). One group which is technologically inferior may prosper while the other “unsociable” and however technically superior one may decay and perish over a span of time. Hence, depending on the circumstances, mutual aid can be entirely replaced by mutual struggle or resistance, for a community or group of human beings or dogs or rats or wasps or ants.

Like the animals and birds surviving inside unstable or hostile ecosystems, we must be deeply impressed by the “sociability” that early human beings displayed, since their very first steps in life. Or from what we find traces belonging to Stone Age and later Neolithic societies. Observe the savages and sociability? Closely bound together by an ancient clan, primordial organization, which enabled them to combine individually weak entities, based on mutual aid, sharing and collective security. After all, Socialism was not invented in 19th century Europe (Latin ‘sociare’ to combine or to share) and it was Aristotle who said “Man is a social animal”. Indeed society is something based on mutual agreement and aid, that precedes the individual. But man is no exception in Nature. From an ecologically sane point of view, the best chances of survival are for those who best support each other in the struggle for life.

While popular history records the great structures, magnificent empires, epic wars, mighty religions, stupendous conquests, god-like kings and queens and ever astonishing achievements, discoveries and disasters of mankind, it has less to say (and show) about human evolution over the span of time when mutual aid and decentralized societies (of scale) evolved and prospered. A peace-time history of social instincts and social progress? While the existence of mutual aid, mutual decision making and collective resistance, has always posed a clear threat to centralized power and the rulers of a given age and place, it has not completely disappeared from the human story. From the Neolithic to the barbarian to the medieval to the modernized, after knowing so much about what divided and ruined human beings, we should check out the institutions and conditions which has united and harmonized human society for eons.

Mutual aid in it’s modern form is at the heart of anarchist practice and philosophy, as much as leading public movements of the 19th and 20th century such as the Suffragists, Feminists, Labor Unions, Black Civil Rights, Anti-Apartheid, BDS, Occupy Movement, Anti-Nuclear Weapons, Earth Liberation Front, Black Bloc and many more. In spite of rising violence and persecution, indigenous people allover the world practice diverse forms of mutual aid and mutually planned resistance. Thousands of small front-line organizations fighting for justice are also an outcome mutual solidarity. Women of all races have shown us amazing examples of mutual aid and resilience through the ages. Hence, at the heart of mutual aid is the clan, call it an institution or dynamic group which we know has existed since the so called savages, barbarians and primitives did. A clan that not only presupposes the importance of survival but also poses a considerable challenge to top-down forms of governance and consequent forms of tyranny.

The type of mutual aid being addressed here, is not about nations or races or ideologies that acquire power through mutual agreements or mutually beneficial economic / geopolitical gains. The global techno-industrial empire which sustains itself upon “infinite growth made of entities which eternally compete with each other…” (Ted Kaczynski) could care less for evolutionary factors and benefits. A majority of human beings today struggle for existence and stability in varying degrees, which also equates to a constant struggle against all anti-natural conditions, created by civilized human beings, as unfavorable or dangerous in construct to us as a species.

The triumph of individualism, competition and unbridled growth for the last 150 years is unraveling consequences and threats in ways never seen before. In the domain of ethics, mutual aid reappears as a principle and a “natural tendency”. As the world precipitously falls from a “green paradise” (The Dune) to one of no meaning and mass extinction, it is clear that human beings are the ‘unsociable species’ as individualists and reckless growth freaks. Unlike the natural world, are human beings doomed in this evolutionary game of mutual aid and solidarity?

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